


Star Wars: These Grown-Up Children We Became

by Rainbow_squirrels_7



Series: Star Wars: Epithets [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27739444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainbow_squirrels_7/pseuds/Rainbow_squirrels_7
Summary: We grew up in golden lightEvery chance to get it right.What did we do with it?It’s gone.What I had back then is gone.Can’t get it back again.Raised by kids who gave us names,These grown-up children we became.Spread the gossip and the shame.We waited.We waited.-Forgive the Children we Once Were, Delta Rae
Series: Star Wars: Epithets [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1614694
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	Star Wars: These Grown-Up Children We Became

**Star Wars: These Grown-Up Children We Became**

“He was supposed to have grown up in the peace he deserves. He’s a _child_ fighting a war for the galaxy that was supposed to protect _him_ , and he has to protect _it.”_ The knight spits these words, angry on behalf of his squire- a boy with the brightest of blue eyes, and a heart that ached with its fullness- it had been too long since the boy had felt the love he does now. But that wasn’t enough for the knight, “What an honor, our masters would’ve said. What an injustice.”

The woman beside him is not his own apprentice, but had been one all the same, like he himself had been, before every star in the galaxy had changed, had dimmed. The knight’s squire doesn’t have the same weight on his shoulders as the two of them do (his own weight is different), the burden of living when someone else who deserved it more maybe should have lived instead. 

The apprentice sighs and says, “When you’re young, every adult says to be kind, to never act in violence, to talk out your problems instead of fighting.” She knew too well; she had walked away, once almost a centurion of stars and suns and of a magic that wove its way through every being in the galaxy- she says this to the knight beside her. They sit below an orange-red sunset on a planet of corals and towering spires of rock. “But then, they put a sword in your hands and tell you to go to war. They tell you to kill, and that it’s okay to do it. They tell that to _children_ who know nothing better, and soon, they know nothing else.”

“That’s not what I wanted for him.” The knight says this as though he were his squire’s father, and he tilts his head up towards the apprentice, turquoise eyes reflecting the cloudless sky. 

“You know we didn’t deserve it, either,” the apprentice can’t meet his gaze, and the glowing light around them catches the wavy blue-and-white stripes running down along either side of her face as she turns away, “To grow up in a war.” 

She remembers talking with the soldier in white and blue armor, the colors so close to some of her own, one of many thousands just like him, but her best friend all the same. She remembers the moments just before everything changed: “ _We have mixed feelings about the war. Without it, we wouldn’t exist.”_

He had been talking about himself, then- himself and his legions of brothers, literal comrades in arms. They were created to fight, and more importantly, to die. A thousand proxies, a thousand stars going out to preserve ones deemed more important. And they had seen nothing wrong with that. 

Fighting for peace was something the apprentice hadn’t questioned until everything changed- not when she turned away from the light that hummed in her bones, but when the entire galaxy had seemed to shake with the _weight_ of _that change_ , when a choice was made that split the stars apart and children died all at once all across the universe. No one knew why the change had come, no one knew why the stars seemed less bright, and no one knew why friends turned to enemies- to faceless monsters in white masks once seen as unique and full of color to the ones they had protected and fought beside, had grown close to even if that part hadn’t been typed into the codes that made up either party’s lives. 

When she saw him again, her soldier, her friend- after so long, it was only at that moment that she had realized that time had gone on and it had not spared either of them. They weren’t children anymore, fighting in a war that had molded them into what they are now. She’d had an image held in her head of a young man with light hair, unlike his brothers’ dark- he had a rough outer shell, but a heart so huge, it could fit the galaxy inside. It wasn’t any wonder the three of them, the apprentice, her master, and their soldier had grown so close; all of their hearts were that size. But this image was replaced with an old, white-bearded man. His amber eyes were still the same, and that small crooked scar was still visible on the side of his head- a reminder of the act that had saved him but doomed his brothers, the act the apprentice herself had done. That day the galaxy had cracked in half, darkness spilling from the rift- that was the one single time she had seen him cry, streaks of tears curving through the grime that covered his face beneath his helmet.

 _Fighting…_ for _peace_.

She realized the irony of that, now. The only family she had ever known, the family she chose to leave- they had been thousands of beings with the power of the stars in their hands, but they were never meant to be an army. And supposedly, they hadn’t always been. But an army was all that the apprentice had known, and sometimes, it didn’t matter what they were _supposed_ to have been. Sometimes, it had almost been enough to seem like they weren’t child soldiers- like the apprentice and her master and their soldier and his brothers weren’t all children who had been taught to be hungry for war. But _fighting for peace_ … it was only after everything that the apprentice realized how hollow those words made her feel, the ones that had been repeated like a mantra all through her childhood as justification for the war, for the horrors. But war only bred more war, both the apprentice and her soldier knew that now- yet they still chose to come back to it, and it had brought them together again.

(Later, they had sat in a small room in the dark, the only light coming from a flickering blue hologram projected out of a golden, palm-sized cube. The projection was a ghost of a man who might as well have been a ghost in fact, a man they had both loved. He spoke a prerecorded message and performed movements of some lesson long-past, but it didn’t matter because it was _him_ \- her master, his general. This was the man they remembered, the one who had died because neither of them had been at his side. And the apprentice didn’t want to admit to a darker thought that had snaked its way into her mind like the cold dragon of a dead star. 

Those three beings had called her master a name close to his own, but not the same, on that magical, not-quite-real planet. The gods of light, dark, and the middle- they whispered a name given to an eldritch, primordial being older than the blackness between stars, more ancient than earth or sky. One for a conductor of the symphony of fate and destiny, the one who reigns over necessity and constraint, of Force itself.

She’d left that planet with the blood of a goddess coursing through her veins, but the weight of three lives balanced between herself, her master, and his own former teacher. The older master had never told her what he’d witnessed, some kind of horrible vision of the best friend and brother shared between them- but she knew it haunted him. They had never really understood what happened there, the things they had seen. 

Until the change came, and events were put into motion that the apprentice had tried to ignore despite the voices and signs screeching the opposite; the captain in that old story, tied to the mast of his ship to hear the deadly siren’s song because he was curious, in spite of its warnings and the cold loneliness it brought as the only one who knew its words.

 _Everything_ had depended on him. Both the light and the dark, both life and death.

“So don’t admit it- it’s not true. It can’t be,” Her soldier had said, and it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. He had reached to grab her hand and give it a squeeze, his thick, wrinkled hands dwarfing her own delicate, rust-colored ones. “We know who he was- a good man. The best man. And we loved him for that- I’m sure he knew it, too. A man like that couldn’t…” he had trailed off, desperate to believe his own words. He had just leaned forward, then, pressing his forehead against hers, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles in gentle circles. And they had sat there in silence, neither knowing how to exist.)

And yet, they continued to exist, even after the war was over, somehow. Though neither thought they could live without it.

It never ended, really, in their minds and their dreams. Not for those who had lived it too long to remember anything else. 

The apprentice watches the knight’s focus shift, looking down from their perch on top of a hill- down toward their too-small collection of misfit rebels, of pieces of too many puzzles crushed together to try and make them fit where they simply weren’t meant to. 

But that was what was so amazing about this new family the apprentice had found herself in. Against all odds, they _tried_. Even when everything was against them, when the darkness in the galaxy made itself into a black monster with rolling tentacles and a thousand heads, with breath of fire and poison. That darkness was the box of an ancient princess- when it was opened, everything that was horrible and evil and dark burst out and roamed to every corner of the cosmos, blacking out the stars. But one thing was left inside and that was what this new family was determined to save.

And that thing that was left was hope.

The apprentice could see it in the knight’s eyes, in the pride he felt for his children and family in everything but blood; she could sense it under the skin of the squire, shining like so many suns; in the artist and her paintings- her defiant act against an evil that would try to drain the galaxy of its color; in the fighter, the great but kind beast who had lost so much, and instead of making others lose in the same way, he fought so no one would lose again.

And the apprentice saw light fit to burst from within the pilot, the girl who carried the meaning of hope across the stars as though it was branded on the wings of her ship. And she carried the barely-hid gazes of affection, the words and actions of fondness from the knight who so clearly loved her, but knew she wouldn’t shrug off the weight of the galaxy, not because she _had_ to hold it, but because she _wanted_ to. 

No, the war hadn’t ended, it had _changed_. And the galaxy, the stars, the planets and beings- the tapestry of light and dark and everything in between had changed with it. 

“We didn’t deserve it,” the apprentice finally says to the knight, completing her own statement, “No child should grow up in a war, should _fight_ in one. That’s… that’s why we have to change things. So that never happens again.”

The apprentice could only try to make that change be for the better. 

***

They came to a planet of death and old gods, of corpses made of dust and a sky filled with holes. A shell of a man with a crown of thorns had brought the darkness in the heart of the squire to the surface from where it had been lurking, hidden beneath miles of saltwater in a sea of guilt where monsters writhed and spun.

Three went, and all three changed. 

The squire, more lost than ever- knowing now he can be tricked, and so easily by the dark.

The knight, a sword of red-hot fire sliced across his eyes, burning away his sight forever.

And the third, the apprentice- she didn’t come back. 

The two that are left blame themselves.

The knight can’t see the broken face of the old soldier when only he and his squire return from the underworld (that’s what the old stories say- heroes who come back from the realm of death cannot do so without loss; it is the price that must be paid), can’t see his time-withered face fall as breath leaves him, as he realizes he’s outlived his two closest friends- something he shouldn’t have been allowed to do (the soldier doesn’t think of the dark dread the apprentice had confided to him, doesn’t want to believe that the man they had both loved could have been the reason she didn’t come back).

But the knight can feel it when hands cup his face, he immediately recognizes his pilot- he would know her from a thousand others, even without his sight. The pure _light_ radiating off of her is so warm and present, the knight thinks for a moment that his burned and shredded eyes have miraculously healed, but no- and exhausted from the pain and the feeling of stars wheeling across his shoulders, he leans into his pilot’s touch and embrace.

The squire can see everything, though. The faces of his friends, so empty and broken as they go and are led away.

 _He won’t-_ **_can’t_ ** _let this happen again._

The squire runs and hides, like he always has. He finds the smallest place, the most hidden place, away from all the voices pleading with him to explain the cause for his guilt. Because of _course it’s his fault_ , he didn’t have any other reasoning. 

But he finds he isn’t alone- the old soldier is perched on the edge of supplies as-of-yet-unpacked in the mad scramble to set up a home for their too-small rebellion. The soldier is the exact person the squire least wants to see, but the boy stays still.

The strings of fate are made of light and dark, made of dying stars and the bodies of long-forgotten gods, of nebulae exploding and creating life where none had been before, and sometimes, the boy can see them. If he looks into a corner, a patch of blue-black in the night sky, in the vastness of space, beings like him, ones who could feel the push and pull of the universe and all its magic around them can be taught to see the threads.

In that tapestry, he sees the soldier. He sees something that could have been, in a man less kind.

He’s old despite the few years that have been piled inside him like layers of sand in a canyon pushing down with so much weight; he’s the fossils that stick out of the parched wall, a relic left over from ages past. 

The soldier sees him, and the crinkled leather of his face screws and twists, his teeth showing like the fangs of a beast. The squire could tame beasts, but not the ones that were actually human beneath all the claws and glowing, slit-pupiled eyes.

A roar escapes from where it had been locked behind the beast’s jaws, a cry of blame- _he’s alone, now. The two people he loved most of all, gone_. And the boy did nothing-

_No, this isn’t what happens._

The soldier is no stranger to loss, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

The squire is a kid, hardly older than the apprentice had been when she’d met the soldier. That thought ices over his heart, puts a twist in his gut. Children hadn’t stopped fighting wars. 

“C’m ‘ere, kid,” the soldier is surprised by how steady his voice is as he pats the space beside him. The squire hesitates, but joins the older man as the orange-red sunset is painted across the sky above them. Pillars of coral throw shadows, and beams of light cut through the holes that are pocked across them. They remind the soldier of burning lines shot through by lasers in a carapace of metal and wires. 

“It’s not your fault, you know that.” It’s not a question, but the boy screws his eyes shut, leaving the air empty of a reply. “No one blames you,” the soldier goes on.

“You of all people should be blaming me,” the boy’s voice is tight as the knot in his stomach, “You should be angry. I- I messed up!” The squire faces the soldier, and the boy’s face is reddened, his eyelashes ringed with unshed tears- they sparkle as though stars had gotten caught up in the smallest asteroid belt.

In another tongue, the soldier’s name means _king_. He doesn’t think himself the ruler of anything, except perhaps of a burning legacy- one with only a single page left, the edges starting to blacken and wrinkle from the smoldering air around it. 

(He doesn’t think about how the apprentice’s name was also one for a ruler, a monarch of an ancient land, a forgotten dynasty. A name tinged with joyous, regal music one moment, and a somber, slow sound filled with farewells the next. He doesn’t think about how their names fit together perfectly in that way.)

(What the soldier doesn’t know is that the boy’s name means _help_ . It is a cry from deep in his throat, or, it is what he does- something the boy learned he can never ignore when combined with other words: _help me. Help me, please._ And that is what the galaxy is saying.)

(But the soldier knows that a boy’s shoulders should not be bent down with the weight of saving.)

“You can’t save everyone all the time,” the soldier says, and the reply comes from two voices at once, one in the present and the other in the past.

“I can try,” says a boy with dark, blue-black hair, two parallel cuts scarring one side of his face. In another time, a different boy, with wild, light locks, and a single scar cutting down through one eye- he says the same thing. 

“She wasn’t your responsibility,” the soldier nearly chokes on saying the word in past-tense, “It was her choice. She used her choice to save you and your master.”

The squire’s next words are hardly above a whisper, “Maybe she shouldn’t have.”

A thousand thoughts vie for use in the old soldier’s mind at that response. The first are from that beast the boy had seen through the tapestry- words screamed in anger, in pain: _I’m hurting just as much as you are! She was the only one left, the only one who made things feel like they hadn’t changed! What do you know of loss? You haven’t seen your comrades, your brothers bleeding out on a battlefield, begging you to pull off their helmets, lest they die as a number rather than a person!_ She _knew! She was there! She cared! She loved-_

_And she was there when it all ended. When everything changed._

This is why the latter thoughts, the ones from the heart of the kind man the soldier truly is are the ones he listens to. 

“Maybe not.” The soldier shrugs, and is met with the wide eyes of the boy, who spun his head around to face the older man, clearly not planning to have been agreed with.

“See? Sounds crazy to you, too.” And the boy sputters for a moment, while the soldier offers him a short chuckle before sobering up, “Kid, you can’t let her choice be in vain. If not for me… then for her.” 

The squire’s crestfallen face looks more surprised than sullen for half a second, and he says, “I… I’ll try.”

The soldier had never been granted the privilege of a surname- perhaps, had the war ended how they all dreamed it would (impossibly, bright and filled with the luxurious, peaceful things he and his brothers had only heard whispers of: dancing in great halls, tables laden with too much food, nights filled with sounds of singing and days filled with laughter- neither bursting and breaking apart with the screaming and coughing of explosions and blaster fire, of men who look just like you dying in hardly a second), perhaps he would have got one, somehow. He’d liked the sound of his general’s, a name for one who stood amongst the stars, above the skies, but he’d have taken any of the ones he knew (which showed how much he knew about surnames)- his commander’s (the apprentice’s, a short, hard word, two syllables- tough like she ~~is~~ was, but so sweet), the high general’s, who’d commanded another force of his brothers (his was longer, with three syllables and a softer sound- much like the man himself had been), or even the queen’s, had she let him (her name had been one for royalty, gorgeous and gilded like she had been, and just as powerful, four syllables long and almost a poem- though of course, she had shared his general’s name as well), but they were all dead, the old soldier made to have the life of some sort of insect (short, sometimes beautiful despite everything, but often ugly and overlooked, squished under a boot heel and quickly forgotten about) was the last left among them. 

The squire, though- his family name was different than any the soldier had heard before. It was just a word, an action- something one did, and perhaps what the boy could do, why he was so important. He had to carry the legacy of the old soldier’s general, of his commander- to bridge the divide between _before_ and _after._

 _Before_ the cull of knights with supernovae where their hearts should be.

 _Before_ the countless millions of same-faced soldiers were told to darken the stars, unable to control their thoughts above the cacophony of screaming drums between their ears, behind their eyes.

To _after_.

Now, there could be an after- and this time, it could be the one they all deserved. 

The squire still looks unsure as the old soldier moves his tired eyes in his direction once more. The boy was tough, he had to be- he’d get through this. How, the soldier wasn’t sure; his own general once had the same heart, one that bled for every life lost. Vaguely, the soldier wonders if that could have been the man’s downfall, in the end. 

He couldn't let the boy lose himself in the same way. 

He couldn’t lose _himself_ in the same way. 

Wordlessly, the squire stands and starts away from him, his feet dragging as he goes, and the soldier is left alone. 

He glances up towards the darkening sky, purple and navy pushing the red and yellow-orange further down towards the horizon; white specks of stars and planets begin to appear, shining through wisps of cloud. 

His commander had told him before- that unifying, breathing force of magic was within every single being in the universe. He wouldn’t have believed it, had he not seen the unimaginable feats she and her master had been able to perform, if she hadn’t saved him from himself by using that power. She’d told him that when a being dies, they would become part of that magic themselves.

Now, the soldier didn’t know about that. Even with all the lives he’d seen taken from bodies that couldn’t hold them in anymore (leaking through blazing, cauterized cuts, out of shot-through holes, through invisible, grasping hands around throats), he wasn’t one to speculate about some perfect life or paradise beyond its end. 

No, what the soldier believed in were words. 

Through words, through stories and songs and tales told around campfires, whispered between brothers, laughed over drinks at a tavern, (through _names_ , not _numbers)_ \- that was how people stayed alive. That was how people were remembered, even long after their time. 

And he’d be damned if he’d let his commander be forgotten. 

So, he supposed he had some stories to tell. 

***

How does the galaxy return to normal after so much bad has happened? How can it ever be normal again?

This is the truth: it never will be.

There is one constant within light and dark and even in the spaces between, the middle ground that shows as cracks of bright white across a black glass mirror, or as spots of obsidian ink saturating an ivory page; this is the one constant within them all- change. 

There is no single state, because change is in the very nature of light and dark- change itself _is_ nature. And that is why, when every battle is won, when black and red banners fall from parapets and are stomped into dust, when a world-killing machine and a man-turned-monster and the monster that made him that way are destroyed- even then, the galaxy will not have returned to normal. 

Because there is always a fight to be won, a voice to raise above the ones that would drown it out, a riot, a revolution, an injustice to correct not for yourself, but for the others who need it even if you never will. Because there is always something bigger to be a part of. 

This is what the pilot knows. 

There are things she doesn’t know- how her family found through cause and care but not blood will shrink and grow with the time that passes; how the man she loves, her knight with a sword made of blue starlight, with clouded, scarred eyes that could see nothing, but could always see her- she doesn’t know he will not live to see their glory, and he will not live to see their legacy. 

She knows that it is easier to do nothing, to accept the horrors and dark, slithering things that worm their way around the hearts of good people, into the words and actions of those who don’t know better, who weren’t taught anything else. It is easier to do nothing because the ones who do good, the ones who help are so, so tired. 

It is exhausting to be angry for so long.

But it has to be done. Good has to triumph over evil, because it is easier to choose to hate- easier to stop believing that things could ever get better. Because good has to be _fought for_ , has to be seized from where it spills out between the clenched fingers of men who stole the stars away from the ones who were never able to hang on to them.

All one can do is _choose_ to make a change. A change that does good with the time they’re given.

So when the knight asks his pilot, as he has before in late-night whispers when their children are asleep, when they sit together with words (three words) hidden beneath skin and hands and entwined fingers; under heads leaned on shoulders and heartbeats heard through warm chests, he asks, “What will you do, when this is all over?”, she doesn’t have any answer for him, except that truth. 

And he’s heard the answer before, he can’t ignore the strange mixture of cold disappointment and bright, shining pride that swirl in his stomach. 

(Years ago, in a different life, the knight would have never known such feelings; would have been warned against them, in favor of antiquated doctrine and scripture covered over in dust. It is why, even now, a dark place within him, usually unseen and obscured by everything he’s learned that contradicts the old teachings- that dark place still calls out that he isn’t worthy of such a love.)

This is why he doesn’t ask, “What will _we_ do, when this is all over?”

For now, that feeling of pride, of pure wonder at his pilot’s unshakeable determination in the face of such great evil, in the shadow of such impossible odds is enough. He lets himself get swept away, into her hurricane of hope- a gale force wind bent on engulfing the entire galaxy into its turn. 

When the knight was a young squire himself, when the cosmos seemed filled with light and promise, he was filled fit to bursting with curiosity. Then, there had been war, too, but it hadn’t seemed as close, hadn’t seemed as real- at least, not at first. During lessons, with thousands of stardust-blood centurions spread through the galaxy, when he was younger, everything seemed okay, seemed _safe._ Questions that could only be asked in whispers now would be shouted or laughed: _“When the war is over, what will you do?”_

_When the war is over…_

_When the war is over._

_When the_ war _is_ over...

But then, they called a fourteen-year-old boy _commander_. A child, and he was leading a war party, responsible for the lives and deaths of those around him. He wasn’t even the only one- the boy with fiery red hair, the older girl with yellow-green skin and a splash of dark spots across her nose, and countless others whose faces the knight doesn’t remember now, or doesn’t want to; they live in the benthic depths of his mind where light can't reach them. Surely, all the friends he once had are dead, now. 

His given name then had meant _whole-hearted_ , but his surname had a different weight, the weight of an ending- had sounded like the deep, tolling bell of an ancient clock: _doom, doom, doom._

When the galaxy shook with a scarlet scream, the thunder of a thousand thousand blue-hot shots going off all at once and hundreds of star-blood bodies falling to the ground in their wake, he threw that name away in favor of one that would keep him hidden, one evoking feelings of _a promised land_ ; it had been a wishful thought, the dream of a child. Then, stuck at the bottom of a lightless pit, he was left to drift and drown in drink and apathy. 

Abandoned and alone, the cosmos that once sang with life were suddenly quiet. He hadn’t known if anyone like him was left- if every white-armored brother turned on the ones they had once called commander, general, friend. The knight was made to hide the truth of what he was- at the cost of his life should his secret be revealed. And with that kind of hiding, keeping a part of your very soul and person secreted away from the world, it is all one can do to not turn dark because of it; to not lose yourself in dead dreams and a flame-bright future snuffed out and cold. To not become scared.

He’d often asked himself why _he_ had survived when so many others had died- the thousands upon thousands spread through the stars. Why had he, a child, survived when the adults who should have been fighting the war did not? The knight only realized later, when he met the apprentice, another who had survived the cull: the two of them hadn’t been trained to be knights, they were trained to be soldiers.

The ones who were their masters, the peacemakers-turned-warriors never could have made it as far as their students (or at least, the ones who survived). The students had been raised on nothing _but_ war, had lived and breathed it their entire lives, not knowing any different, while the masters knew all too well of a different time, the time before the war that the students could never even dream of. They believed that things would go back to normal.

If _war_ was normal for those who knew nothing else, then what other normal could the galaxy ever return to? To the knight, the evil, despair, and hopelessness _was_ normal.

But his pilot had seen the evil, despair, and hopelessness in the galaxy and had said, _‘No. I refuse. I do not accept this.’_

That is what real bravery was- looking into the blackest night and insisting there are still stars, finding them yourself even if you have to look and look and look for a miracle, an opportunity, a chance. Even if you have to make them yourself. 

That’s why he loves her. 

And that is why he clings to the edges of her hurricane, trying to pull himself in, wanting so desperately to believe in the same hope she does. 

It’s why he will do anything for her, no matter the cost- if it brings that dream of a galaxy filled with hope and peace, the future she deserves closer to reality then it will all have been worth it. 

His one small wish is to share that future with her. 

**Author's Note:**

> \- in case it wasn't clear, the 'gods' Ahsoka was thinking about in the first part were the Mortis folks, and the name they called Anakin was the one George Lucas based his on, Ananke: a real old Greek deity who's the mother of the Three Fates  
> \- I always thought the names of the space fam in Rebels were interesting, cuz they're all either biblical or mythological, so that inspired the name theme throughout this


End file.
